“It is beautifully written in parts,” said Conny.
“Are these your pencil-marks?” I asked, taking the volume from her lap.
“Yes.”
“Here is ‘beautiful!!!’ with three points of exclamation. ‘The silent stream that runs smoothly past us, checked in its course becomes a raging torrent.’ Very true. Here is a passage doubly underscored: ‘It is easy to love a woman, but difficult to find a woman worth loving.’”
“Oh, never mind those marks,” exclaimed Conny.
“Is the hero often afflicted with salt dews?” I inquired.
“You are laughing at me.” She snatched the book from my hand, and pouted.
“I don’t often read novels,” said I, “but when I do, I must say I like a good gory story—something dripping or dank—with a yellow-haired heroine who loves to sit on her lover’s grave and braid her tresses by the light of the moon, and an Italian rival who stabs everybody in the forehead. If my hair doesn’t rise twice at least in every ten pages, I consider the author a muff. Domestic stories I hate. There is no need to subscribe to a library to hear people ask each other if they prefer brown bread to white, and muffins to crumpets, and to watch a curate take a flute in pieces out of his pocket and blow ‘Ye banks and braes’ to the pensive, flat-chested lady who works him slippers, and puts four lumps of sugar into his tea. Give me, I say, wounds and starting eye-balls, matted hair and clandestine meetings, streams of blood and gurgling yells. I don’t object to noblemen, but I think that money-lenders make the best villains. I also require that the heroine be supple and lightsome, and lissom and loose, with a tread like a panther, and a spring like—like——”
“A flea,” suggested my aunt.
“What a time you men always are over your wine,” said Conny. “What do you talk about?”